Description

Battle Chess is a quite typical chess game, but it comes with a twist: all pieces are represented by small, realistic figures that walk around on the chessboard, and when one piece takes another, they both take part in an animated battle. There is a different animation for each permutation, depending on which pieces are capturing or being captured. You can also play in 2D without animation.

The game's opening library includes 30,000 different moves, ensuring a variety of games will unfold across the 10 skill levels.

Multi-player support can be extended to modem and/or serial port play.

Critic Reviews

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Trivia

Nudity

The game actually features full frontal nudity! In some circumstances where Rook gets the King in checkmate, as the King trembles his robe falls off, leaving him standing starkers, before he runs off in embarrassment (of course, being low-res EGA, there’s not a lot to see even if you *did* want to look!)

References

The scene of a Knight attacking a Knight depicts a classic scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: One by one, all limbs are severed, each time provoking the victim into the same kind of responsive actions the Black Knight made in the aforementioned movie.

If a bishop attacks the king, the bishop will make a big show and swing his staff around, and then the king will simply pull out a gun and shoot him, ending the fight. This is a spoof of a famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indy takes out a sword wielding Arab by pulling out a gun and simply shooting him.

References to the game

There is a movie called Knight Moves (1992) with Christopher Lambert in a main role. He plays some chessmaster, and the plot is around catching some chess-style killer. In one of the opening scenes (maybe 20 mins from the start), while detectives are trying to solve the crime, Christopher Lambert shouts out loud as he was playing Battle Chess. It probably was the animation peon against knight he was watching.

Awards

Computer Gaming World

April 1994 (Issue #117) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame

November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #106 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list